Announcement of "Early Diagnosis" of Autism Through Eye Tracking May Be Premature

Recent headlines on various websites would make you believe that the key to early diagnosis of autism has been found. A few of today's headlines read:

• New test spots autism signs in 9-month-old infants
• New test to detect autism at 9 months
• Canadian researchers make autism diagnosis at 9 months

In fact, though, the study is still very much underway. And so far, from what I can tell, the eye tracking system has been useful only in separating siblings of children with autism from siblings of children without autism. According to an article from The Canadian Press:

Eye tracker technology used to study two groups of babies - either at high or low risk of developing autism - shows differences between the groups at nine months of age, researchers said Thursday.

The findings hold promise for the development of a screening tool to detect autism at an earlier age, said Mel Rutherford, an associate psychology professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

"This is quite early evidence of the development of autism. We're pretty excited about that," she said.

Currently, there is no accepted reliable diagnosis until two years of age.

I did check in with Dr. Rutherford to get a bit more information about the study; here is what she said:

First, it would be premature to say that we are diagnosing children at 9 months. That is the ultimate aim, but the study is still in early stages. What we can do is diagnose a high-risk group (babies who have a sib with autism) from our control group (babies with no autism in the family) at 9 month. This is very promising. It tells us that there are measurable signs of autism developing at 9 months, and it tells us we're on the right track with figuring out how to standardize those measurements. We need to enroll more babies with siblings with autism in order to bring our predictor measures into sharper focus.

The study is bringing children back to the clinic over time. So I had hoped that some of the youngsters who showed unusual eye tracking at nine months had, in fact, been diagnosed with autism through the usual means when they were a bit older. So far as I know, however (and I haven't received an answer to that specific question), that hasn't happened.

In short, while this is an interesting new study, it doesn't yet measure up to the headlines! If you'd like to learn more - or even want to enroll in the study - you can check into the project's website.